Veterans gather to commemorate victory over Japan

Second world war veterans parade past the Cenotaph during a VJ (Victory over Japan) day service. Photograph: Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images

On the command of "march", survivors of the second world war's far east campaign moved forward in their wheelchairs today and past the Cenotaph during a service to mark the 65th anniversary of victory over Japan.

The ever diminishing number of veterans of a conflict that took the lives of 30,000 British service personnel, including 12,500 in prisoner of war camps, saw Prince Charles and David Cameron lay wreaths at the Whitehall war memorial to "the glorious dead", alongside the head of the army, General Sir David Richards.

The Fourteenth Army, known as "the forgotten army", which fought back against the Japanese in India and then Burma, was the largest ever assembled by the British Empire and Commonwealth numbering more than half a million men, 340,000 of whom were from India, 100,000 from Britain and 119,000 from the east and west African colonies.

In warm sunshine, four buglers sounded the last post and Viscount John Slim, the son of General William Slim, commander of the Commonwealth and Empire forces, read the Kohima Epitaph, written following the battle of Kohima near the border of Burma where 4,000 British troops and almost 6,000 Japanese troops died: "When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today."

Prince Charles saluted and Cameron stood head bowed in front of a rank of veterans bearing standards, including that of the Burma Star Association, which represents veterans of the war against Japan. A lone piper from the Scots Guard played a piece specially composed to commemorate Kohima, before the service concluded with a reception for the veterans attended by the Prince of Wales and prime minister.

Among the veterans was RAF serviceman Peter Proctor, 88, from Southport, Merseyside. "I think it's very important to keep the memory alive," he said. "They were the forgotten army.

"When the war ended in Europe there were great celebrations, people were saying the war is over, but it was still going on in the far east."

Earlier, Cameron said: "They fought and suffered around the world in ferocious conditions ... They witnessed incomprehensible horrors. They lost their lives – and many were imprisoned. And they did all this for us – to protect the freedoms we all enjoy today."

General Richards, whose father fought the Japanese at Imphal, said the achievements of Slim and his men is one of the most honoured memories of the British Army.

"'The second world war in the far east began with a series of defeats which rank among the grimmest memories of the British Army, and which caused many thousands of British and Commonwealth troops to suffer captivity in conditions we can scarcely comprehend," he said. "But in 1944 one of the greatest of all British commanders, the much-loved Bill Slim, effected an extraordinary resurrection. First at Imphal and Kohima, then in his 1945 drive back into Burma, he led Fourteenth army's British, Indian and African soldiers to an historic victory."

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